Emily Koehler - Printmaker
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Silence Waits
"When asked how long I’ve been making prints, I stumble. The easiest answer is since I was thirteen, when a family friend invited me to her print studio. It was certainly from that experience that I fell in love with printmaking, but that doesn’t completely answer the question. Even as a baby, I was fascinated by the impression my hands made in wet beach sand, the intricate lines that appeared when I pressed a paint covered thumb onto paper. In my earliest art classes, I scratched images into foam plates and printed them like stamps. How long have I been making prints? Well, forever… that is to say, from my earliest memories. In every print ever made, there is a history of process, a story told through impression. The grain of the wood or the bevel of the copper translate into paper something of their essence where wood becomes image, metal becomes paper, stone becomes print. It is in this transmutation of properties that my love of printmaking lies. Just as the mechanisms of printmaking guide my hand, my heart is inspired by the wonder of cycles and processes in nature. The marrying of these two passions, has informed my art as I seek to explore the intersection of humanity and nature in a world where nothing is untouched by man."
Emily Gray Koehler was born and raised in Traverse City, MI. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking from Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, MI in 2006. After relocating to Minnesota in 2008, she opened her own print studio in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul metropolitan area and is now currently located in the Thorp Building in NE Minneapolis. Koehler’s work is represented in galleries throughout the Upper Midwest and may be found in public and private collections in the United States and Northern Europe.
